Over the great wilderness the cuckoo was calling, and the blackbirds
sang deep-throated in the orchards. Cowslip time had come and gone; a
richer season followed after, with all that wild world rushing into
leaf, covering all ugliness with a film of beauty. The old orchards were
white in the narrow valley where the stream ran through deep green ways;
the trees were snow-trees—rose-edged—floating between the mystery of
the woods and upon the blue distance of the horizon. Grass and weeds
were springing up everywhere in the streets, in the ruins themselves,
threading even the rubbish through with emerald wire. There were
blue-bells in the Bois du Renard above the château, and masses of yellow
broom waving on the uplands.
Beaucourt came to life with the spring. Wonderful things had happened
when that droll, that little wizard of an Anatole Durand had flicked his
wand hither and thither. Dust had risen on the roads. A string of
lorries had lumbered up the street, and a gang of men had unloaded
stores in the green-grey courtyard of the château. The cellars were full
of food; the yard itself stacked with timber and iron. On the circle of
turf at the end of the avenue of chestnuts stood a white tent with a
camp-bed, a chest of drawers, a table, a washing basin, a chair, Anatole
Durand’s home. He took his meals at the Café de la Victoire, where
Brent’s hands were keeping pace with the buoyant rush of the year.
Men were repairing and cleaning the huts in the field on the road to
Rosières, and a temporary camp-kitchen was being improvised. New winches
and buckets had been fitted to the wells. A couple of tractors and light
waggons had panted over the desert roads, and the tractors were at work,
ploughing from dawn till dusk. Great strips of brown soil waited for a
catch-crop. Old Anatole went about with his note-book, like a
field-marshal or a parish priest, organizing, organizing.
Then came the day when the first batch of refugees returned. They
arrived in waggons from Ste. Claire and many other villages, with their
few possessions piled up, like a convoy of settlers in the old days
travelling west. The carts and waggons collected in the field where the
huts stood, and with them came Monsieur Lefèbre, the parish priest.
Anatole Durand met them in the field. He and Monsieur Lefèbre kissed
each other, the agnostic and the Christian.
There was a hot meal ready, iron coppers full of good stew; Manon was in
charge of the hut where meals were to be served. But these peasants sat
down on the grass in the open air like pilgrims on a feast day. They
laughed and talked. One or two of the women wept a little. They had left
the children behind.
Durand and Monsieur Lefèbre sat side by side on the tail of a cart. They
talked; they looked straight into each other’s eyes.
“Do you remember, my friend, how we used to disagree?”
The priest smiled. He had jocund black eyes in a red face, and he was a
good man, if fat.
“Our text is the same to-day. Go forth and recover the wilderness, and
comfort my children.”
“I have a bed in my tent,” said Anatole; “you can use it.”
“That is brotherly of you, but I shall sleep with the men.”
Durand looked round at the peasants sitting on the grass, and his eyes
blessed them.
“Monsieur, I wish to speak to these people presently. I wish to explain
what I have done, what I have planned to do, what we all must do. You
will speak to them also. What better place than the church?”
“In the old days, monsieur.”
Durand shrugged.
“Life is so big,” he said, “that we shall forget to knock our feet
against the stones.”
When the meal was over, Monsieur Lefèbre got up on the cart and told the
people to gather in the church. His jocund black eyes had always been
more persuasive than his preaching, and nobody grumbled at being asked
to go to the church. Monsieur Lefèbre was a good fellow; he deserved his
place on the stage, and to these peasants the day had a religious
meaning; they were attending the sacrament of the soil. Paul and Manon
walked with the crowd, and stood under the broken roof of the church,
with the blue sky showing through it, and grass sprouting through the
stones on the floor. Manon was looking at many familiar faces. There
were the Graviers who had kept the tiny boucherie in the Rue de
Bonnière; the Crampons—Claude Crampon pulling his long nose in the same
odd way as though to make sure he had not lost the end of it; the
Guiveaux, Pierre with his huge flat butter-coloured moustache, and
Josephine, whose red hair was always untidy; the Pouparts, who had kept
a grocery shop, yellow as ever. Old Lebecq carried his cock’s head high
in the air, and behind him his two big daughters giggled together.
Philipon, who had been a blacksmith as well as a farmer, held his pretty
little wife by the arm; his swarthy face was very solemn, and he frowned
as though he wanted to get to work. Lacroix and his wife and boy looked
thin as figures cut out of brown cardboard. Big Jean Roger was smiling
at everybody and picking his teeth with a red match. His daughter
Lucille seemed rather sad; her eyes were vacant; she had lost her lover
in the war. There were one or two younger men who had recently been
demobilized, and a few strong boys who were half inclined to make a joke
of the whole affair. Philipon looked round at them with his fiery eyes
and a gleam of teeth in his black beard.
“Shut up! The dead don’t make fools of themselves like that.”
There was no more horseplay.
Monsieur Lefèbre stood on the steps of the choir. His deep voice rolled
out a prayer, and after the prayer he spoke a few simple words to the
people. He was much moved; his chin shook a little; and the people were
moved with him. They had come back to their homes and their fields; the
blessed spring was with them, the green joy of the year. They would go
out together, without jealousy, helping each other, planting in this
ruined village the imperishable patience of a victorious France.
Lefèbre gave way to old Durand. Anatole’s grey hair seemed to bristle;
he looked straight at them all with shrewd, smiling eyes; his enthusiasm
had a flash of humour.
“My friends, we used to quarrel a little. Perhaps it was my fault.
To-day I am happy; I feel that we have something better to do than to
quarrel—work.”
Philipon gave a growl of applause.
“That’s it—work!”
He glared at the group of youths. Anatole went on.
“Bien. It is not my ground or your ground, it is our ground. It is our
Beaucourt. What do you say? The women to the gardens and the rubbish
heaps, the men to the saw and the hammer and the fields. But you know
what to do. I am an old man, I am enjoying myself; I am spending what I
cannot take with me. I do not stand here and crow; I want to be just a
little old man in Beaucourt.”
There were cries of emotion from the little crowd.
“We understand, monsieur.”
“Without you it could not have happened.”
Durand made a face as though he were not far from tears.
“That’s it; we are all Frenchmen together. Now, then, let me explain.”
He went on to speak of the stores, material and tools that he had
collected. They were to be divided equally and as the need arose. The
tools and the seeds would belong to the village. He wanted a committee,
a village council composed of both men and women to consider what was
fair, and to decide all that should be done. He spoke of Manon and of
Paul, and Paul blushed. Durand called him an expert, a practical
builder. Let them go and look at the Café de la Victoire and see what
Monsieur Paul Rance had accomplished single-handed, and the sight would
cheer up any pessimist. Monsieur Rance had offered to give three hours a
day to the community; and to put himself at the service of anyone who
wanted advice. As for the canteen, well, Madame Latour had that in hand,
but she would need women to help her.
“Now, let us finish with words. Let us choose our council before we
break up. I suggest a council of four men and two women.”
“And a president,” said Philipon.
“I propose Monsieur Durand as president”—this was from old Lebecq.
Anatole was elected. They chose Philipon, Lebecq, Jean Roger and
Monsieur Lefèbre as the men, Manon Latour and Madame Poupart as the
women. The council agreed to meet three times a week at eight in the
evening, and Monsieur Lefèbre suggested the sacristy of the church as
their council-chamber. A board would be set up in the Place de l’Eglise
on which the notices and the decisions of the council would be posted.
“Allons!—to work,” said old Durand.
Philipon echoed him.
“To work. That’s our motto.”
In the passing of half a day the whole atmosphere of Beaucourt had
changed, and the familiar silence of the ruins was broken by the new
life. Brent was planting potatoes in the field below the orchard, for
Etienne Castener had brought his plough over in a cart and ploughed up
half the field for them, and as he dibbled in the seed Brent could hear
voices everywhere. The hollow shell of the village echoed with them; the
place was like a comb full of working bees. Each family had gone to what
had been its house, that brick ruin or shelter of timber, and for a
while there had been silence. What problems, what discouragement! Where
and how to begin? They had been told that Beaucourt had been more
fortunate than the majority of villages—villages that had melted into
mere piles of rubbish. The little groups stood about, staring,
bewildered, lamenting, wandering through the wreckage and the gardens,
standing on the tiled floors of what had been rooms. And in nearly all
cases it was the woman whose instinct escaped first from that apathy of
staring. The housewifely habit stirred in her. Perhaps she began to
clean her kitchen floor, throwing old tins, broken bricks and tiles,
rags, anything, out into the street. That was what Durand had advised
them to do; he had planned to have the rubbish carted away and dumped in
some field. Very soon the men were at work with the women, each cleaning
his particular shell, uncovering his kitchen hearth. Their blood warmed.
Beaucourt was full of the sound of voices, the clatter of tins and
broken tiles. Figures appeared on the walls, or in the spider web of the
sagging timber frames, scattering useless patches of tiling, or knocking
down loose beams and joists. Beaucourt was at work. Anatole Durand found
Philipon sweating like a swarthy Hercules in his little house in the Rue
du Château, knocking down useless bits of wall with a big hammer, while
his pretty wife carried off the sound bricks and stacked them in the
yard.
“Thunder, but this is life!” said the sweating peasant; “I’m happy.”
Manon was walking back from the canteen when she caught sight of a
little old figure approaching along the Rue Romaine. It was none other
than Mère Vitry dressed in her rusty black Sunday clothes, and carrying
a shabby bag. She had been left behind at Ste. Claire as too old to face
the first struggle with the wilderness; but Mère Vitry had had no
intention of remaining in Ste. Claire, and her indomitable legs had
carried her to Beaucourt.
Manon went to meet her, greatly touched by this old thing’s courage.
“Mother, what are you doing here?”
But Mère Vitry was in no need of pity. She seemed to be overflowing with
the sap of a renewed youth; her little black eyes twinkled; her
weather-beaten face was all smiles.
“Here I am. Do you think I was going to be left behind?”
Manon kissed her.
“Come to my house. You must want something to eat.”
“I had my meal on the road, my dear. I would not quarrel with a cup of
coffee.”
Manon took Mère Vitry home with her, and the old lady removed her cloak
and bonnet, and sat down with an air of complete contentment. Her eyes
observed everything; she was the most cheerful soul in Beaucourt. Her
philosophy was touched with the irrepressible optimism of the spring.
Manon offered her her bed.
“No, I shall sleep with the others. They thought I should be a nuisance,
no use; you shall see. I shall put on my old clothes here, my dear, and
then go and begin tidying the house. It needs it.”
It did. There was but a third of the roof left, and no windows and no
doors, and in the garden weeds and rubbish competed with each other.
Mère Vitry put on her old plum-coloured skirt, and black and white check
blouse, borrowed a broom and an old spade, and marched off to battle
like the true Frenchwoman that she was.
Monsieur Lefèbre, taking a parochial stroll, found Madame Vitry sweeping
out the rubbish from the tiled floors of her kitchen and bedroom. He
stood and watched her a moment, a most human smile on his generous face,
and then that plump right hand of his made the sign of the cross.
“So you are busy already, madame?”
She leant on the broom-handle, thin hands clenched, black eyes bright
with renewed youth.
“One cannot be idle, monsieur, when there is so much to be done.”
“You have walked from Ste. Claire?”
“I feel very well, monsieur, very well indeed. To-morrow I am going to
work in my garden.”
“Splendid,” said the priest.
Her face lit up.
“Come inside, Monsieur Lefèbre; I have something to show you in my
garden.”
She led him through the house and into the garden where the new growth
of the year was pushing up through broken bricks and coils of wire, old
tins, the rusty frame of a bedstead, battered petrol cans, barbed wire,
the wheel of a cart. The wooden frame and rusting springs of an old
box-mattress lay across the path. But Mère Vitry was looking at none of
this rubbish. She was pointing upwards and smiling at a gigantic apple
tree whose limbs had been shot away. The tree was nothing but a torso, a
huge, mutilated stump, but from one limb a young branch had grown out
and brandished against the blue sky two little sprays of white blossom.
“That is fine, is it not, monsieur? He is holding up his flag; he is not
beaten.”
She laughed.
“Here we are together, the old woman and the old tree. I flourish a
broom, he waves a bit of blossom. What do you think of it, monsieur?”
The priest’s face was lit up like the face of a saint.
“It is France,” he said, “the very soul of my country.”